The Coat Route (22 page)

The work created a sensation when it went on exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. People lined up to pay twenty-five cents for the chance to peer through a microscope at the pin. When that closed, the Lundberg Pin toured the country for two years. Lundberg, meanwhile, had no time to bask in the glory of his feat. He had a nervous breakdown shortly after completing the pin.

“He did recover after about six months of total rest,” Jim Austin, his great-grandnephew, told me in an email. The Lundberg Pin, Jim says, is in a safety-deposit box near Seattle.

Nearly a hundred years after Godfrey Lundberg completed his pin, a Birmingham, England, engraver named Graham Short got interested in taking up the Lord’s Prayer challenge. The engraver, who was also a champion swimmer with a resting pulse of thirty, wore a stethoscope, and stroked the nineteenth-century needle he was using as a burin only between heartbeats. After successfully completing the pin, he went on to two other unparalleled feats. He fit a chapter from the Koran, in Arabic, on the head of a pin, and the phrase “Nothing Is Impossible” on the barely-there cutting edge of a razor blade.

Becoming accomplished at the most basic hand engraving can take years. More complicated and intricate designs take decades to master. Peter Thompson has been working with his father for thirteen years and still sticks primarily to engraving wedding bands.

“When I started, it took me five days to do one,” Peter tells me. “Now I’ve got it down to maybe five to eight hours. I’m still not up to signet rings.”

By the time Peter takes over the business from his father, which he plans to do, he expects to have signet rings in his repertoire as well. Eventually, a third generation may also join the family trade.

“I have a grandson who is sixteen and he’s interested in working here,” John says. “But I told him, ‘Don’t just do it because you know you could have a job.’ If you haven’t got the commitment or the passion for it, it will honestly break your heart.”

T
he canvases, which would create inner structure, had been soaked in water, hung to dry, and then pressed smooth. The same had been done to the pocketing fabric and cotton elements. John had used plenty of steam. It was crucial to get any shrinkage out at the beginning of the process. Now it was time for the making. Here the tailor handed off the work to his two trusted lieutenants in the workroom, Genaro Scura and Leng Ngo
.

Leng would handle the interior work: three layers of woolen canvas, horsehair, and cotton would be held together with tiny stitches, laid out in a herringbone pattern. These touches, found “under the hood” of a garment if one knew where to look, are the hallmarks of true bespoke. Mass-produced coats and jackets have glued canvases that can come apart at the dry cleaners—and tend to give the garment a flat appearance. J. H. Cutler garments are three-dimensional: sculptures rendered in cloth
.

When the coat was ready for a first fitting, John called Keith and asked him to come by. John and Genaro looked on as Keith slipped the coat on over his suit jacket and turned around to look in the mirror. It was always special, that first moment the client saw himself in the new garment—the dream, Cutler liked to say, made real
.

Keith loved the coat. Now it was a matter of getting the details right. They all agreed that it was a little long, so John took one and a half inches off the length. That would make it more pleasing to the eye, and also make it a bit more casual. He also decided to reduce the
overlap on the front edge by half an inch. The coat was slightly more voluminous than Keith wanted it to be. No worries, John had told Keith. He would reduce the fullness at the hips
.

After the fitting was done, Keith lingered in the shop. John’s clients often did. He knew they liked the way they felt there. Safe, special, satisfied. Why not have a spot of something, eh? It was time for a little celebration
.

I
n a paneled private dining room above the dark cabbage palms and gum trees of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, I am fighting the urge to say, “Boxers or briefs?” A silver-haired doctor with a patrician James Mason-y voice and a knack for speaking in long, grammatically gymnastic sentences has just told me that he wears cashmere underwear.

“Bespoke,” he adds, with a slight tip of his head, as if that point was very nearly moot. “Of course, it has to have a percentage of nylon to be effective.”

“Hmm,” I say, nodding and reaching for my champagne glass.

John Cutler is hosting a dinner party for nine friends, all of whom also happen to be longtime customers of his tailoring business. He has dressed for the occasion in a grape-soda-hued mohair-and-wool suit edged with clementine-orange stitching—the color of which just matches the single-breasted jacket’s silk lining. His necktie, a shimmery amethyst exclamation point, is nubbed, mid-chest, by a pearl stickpin and set off by a pressed white shirt. Along the top edge of his jacket’s breast pocket, a
folded handkerchief appears as a flat half-inch bar of white. On his feet are narrow lace-up shoes of black calf and purple suede, custom-made by his friend Stefano Bemer in Florence.

We are on the second floor of the Australian Club, Sydney’s oldest and most exclusive gentlemen’s retreat. Membership is by invitation only, and must be supported by no fewer than eight current members. That John was nominated and accepted ten years ago is a testament to his genial personality, his personal connections, and the elevation of his profession in the eyes of the city’s élite from lowly tradesman to esteemed artisan.

“I’ve even been asked to be on the wine committee,” he told me later. “My forebears would be very surprised.”

Women may socialize here in the company of a member, but they are not allowed to join the club. (They are also required to take the elevator to the upper floors—a fact that was pointed out with obvious alarm by the lobby attendant, who halted me as I started up the stairs.) John’s guests have moved from the outer lounge area, where cocktails were served, to a long table set with place cards, white linen, silver candelabras, and heavy cutlery. Most of the men appear to be in their sixties. Some are paunchy, some slim; all are freshly shaved and all are wearing dark suits made for them by John Cutler. The discussion, as we were being seated, had been about champagne—and the relative merits of non-vintage versus vintage (my vote, if I had been asked, would have been yes to both). Now the conversation has turned to their collective passion for bespoke—and their devotion to J. H. Cutler.

“I identified myself long ago as someone for whom the comfort zone was essential to maintain,” says Philip Knowles, the cashmere-undie-wearing general practitioner seated next to me. “I was greatly threatened by anything that threatened my sense of
personal comfort, right down to on my skin. What John excels in is realizing a dream of remarkable personal comfort which is exquisite in its detail, quality, and refinement—and is something about which only you know.”

“And, once you are hooked, you are hooked for life,” says David Skillman, a trim marketing executive in a red silk tie, seated across from me. “In my case, strange as it may seem, when I first went to work I was amazingly shy. I used to walk by John’s father’s shop on Bligh Street and look in the window. One day in 1969, I actually walked in. John and I hit it off right away. He made me my first suit—mid-gray mohair and wool. And, after I walked out into the world in my carefully crafted coat of armor, I was invincible. I was Superman. I felt so confident because I knew I had the absolute best, and I could look any other man in this town dead in the eye and say, ‘I’m as good as you.’ ”

“Absolutely.” “Quite right,” the men huff.

“It’s about knowing that you look the best person on the street, that you are wearing something that no one else is wearing, that no one else understands—and you’re it,” says Tony Wain, a Melbourne-based fabric supplier and the sales agent for Stefano Ricci. “I picked up three pairs of trousers from John today, and I know that when I wear those I’m going to feel absolutely fantastic. It’s just so good to know you have something new and something special that is going to fit you and look good and make you feel well.”

“That’s exactly right—and that shouldn’t be underestimated,” Philip says, “because the sense of negativity in which you can engage every day, whether as a small businessman or a medical practitioner, is such that it can overwhelm you gradually from one year to the next, let alone one day to the next.

“Yesterday, for example, I had a nineteen-year-old boy stab
his girlfriend in the waiting room. And another person had a heart attack in the waiting room, and yet a third fractured her femur whilst coming up the stairs to the waiting room. These sorts of things happen about once every eight or nine working days. To survive the traumas of practicing medicine, I rely on many arrows in my quiver, and one of the most important arrow for me is this sense of personal comfort … and knowing I have around me this little cocoon of Cutlerian elegance and comfort. It allows me to distance myself.”

“I can relate so much,” says Craig Dyer, the youngest man in the group. Craig is a fit-looking, hyper-groomed forty-something radiologist and champagne bar owner who resembles a less intense Anthony Perkins. “To be able to express yourself and immerse yourself in the joy of [wearing bespoke clothes] … it’s like art. Going into John’s shop is like going into an art gallery. You feel enlightened and enlivened. It helps all the misery you experience during the day go away. It’s a bit like my
penchant
for champagne. If I didn’t have a little ray of sunshine at the end of the day, there would be no point in me working—no point in me living—because the stress we undergo is enormous.”

“Yes.” “So true.”

“All of my jackets and trousers are John’s,” Craig continues. “I threw everything else away because they didn’t fit right. And I have to say that every time—every single time—I walk out the door, someone comes up to me and says, ‘You look very good.’ Just tonight, I was waiting for a taxi, and a woman said, ‘Love your jacket and trousers,’ and just kept walking. When I was in Paris, three complete strangers in the space of a few hours came up to me and said, ‘That suit you’re wearing is fantastic.’ It almost gets embarrassing.”

“What about the count, Craig?” John says from the head of the table.

“Ah, the count. The very first garment I got John to make for me was a dinner suit, because I was going to a very official ceremony in France. I had to go up to the front. The Comte Audoin de Dampierre was in the ceremony—he’s a very famous count in Champagne. And afterward I was seated and he came over and leaned down and said, ‘You are the only person here who is dressed correctly.’ And I said, ‘But everyone is wearing a dinner suit.’ And he said, ‘Yes, but yours is the only one that is handmade.’ I said, ‘How did you know that?’ And he said, ‘I can tell.’ ”

“You
can
tell,” David Skillman says. “Walking around town, you see what people have on and you look at the buttons and the fit and the cut. It’s a certain style and look. You recognize it—and you think, I know what you paid for that, you bastard.”

There are chuckles from around the table as the waiters remove the champagne flutes and begin pouring a French Sancerre to accompany small plates of salmon blinis. Someone asks where one buys one’s pure cashmere socks—Turnbull & Asser in London, of course—and, yes, they do stock them in cardinal red. Another laments the difficulty of locating anyone who still knows how to darn. A question is raised about the appropriateness of monogrammed buttons.

“I actually think it is a nice touch.”

“No, no, never.”

“I only do it around the edge,” Philip says, pointing to his delicate white pearl shirt buttons.

Phrases I have never heard before are tossed out—“three-quarter hose,” “Corby trouser press,” “double-cashmere dressing gown.” Then there are mystifying declarations, like “One of the
greatest disappointments in life is a silk shirt,” which carry with them the resonant weight of an epitaph. The waiters present plates of beef tenderloin and fondant potatoes as the men swirl a just-poured New South Wales Shiraz in tulip-shaped glasses and begin to reminisce about Robert Hawke, one of Australia’s more dapper past prime ministers.

“He went from dressing in the most dreadful clothes to being superbly dressed.… It happened quite suddenly after someone took him to this man,” says Michael Egan, the former treasurer of New South Wales, gesturing toward John. “Of course, he had no personal taste. He had to be looked after.”

“The first time I met him I was summoned to a meeting,” the tailor says. “And I remember walking in and he looked at me rather nervously and said, ‘What is this going to do for my polls?’ And I said, ‘It will be very good for your polls.’ And he said, ‘All right, let’s get on with it, then.’ I ended up making him about fourteen suits.”